Mongabay (mongabay.com) is a conservation news web portal that reports on
environmental science
Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physics, biology, and geography (including ecology, chemistry, plant science, zoology, mineralogy, oceanography, limnology, soil science, geology and physical geograp ...
,
energy
In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of heat a ...
, and
green design
Environmentally sustainable design (also called environmentally conscious design, eco-design, etc.) is the philosophy of designing physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of ecological sustainability ...
, and features extensive information on
tropical rainforests
Tropical rainforests are rainforests that occur in areas of tropical rainforest climate in which there is no dry season – all months have an average precipitation of at least 60 mm – and may also be referred to as ''lowland equa ...
, including pictures and
deforestation
Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. The most concentrated d ...
statistics for countries of the world. It was founded in 1999 by economist
Rhett Ayers Butler
Rhett Ayers Butler (born 1978Guynn, Jessica"A site of inspiration" ''San Francisco Chronicle'', 5 July 2006. Retrieved on 17 February 2021.) is an American journalist, author and entrepreneur who founded Mongabay, a conservation and environmental ...
in order to increase "interest in and appreciation of wildlands and
wildlife
Wildlife refers to domestication, undomesticated animal species (biology), species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wilderness, wild in an area without being species, introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous ...
, while examining the impact of emerging local and global trends in technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development". In recent years, to complement its US-based team, Mongabay has opened bureaus in Indonesia, Latin America, and India, reporting daily in Indonesian, Spanish, and English respectively. Mongabay's reporting is available in nine languages.
History
In an interview with Conjour, Butler said his passion for rainforests drove him to start Mongabay: "I was intrigued by the complexity of these ecosystems and how every species seemed to play a part. As I became more passionate about rainforests, I grew more concerned about their fate, including the threats they face."
Etymology
The founder of the website explains that "mongabay" originated from an anglicized spelling and pronunciation of
Nosy Mangabe
Nosy Mangabe is a small island reserve located in Antongil Bay about 2 km offshore from the town of Maroantsetra in north-east Madagascar. it is accessible by small boat and is part of the larger Masoala National Park complex. It is a tropi ...
, an island off the coast of
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
. He goes on to note that it is best known as "a preserve for the
Aye-aye
The aye-aye (''Daubentonia madagascariensis'') is a long-fingered lemur, a strepsirrhine primate native to Madagascar with rodent-like teeth that perpetually grow and a special thin middle finger.
It is the world's largest nocturnal primate. ...
, a rare and unusual
lemur
Lemurs ( ) (from Latin ''lemures'' – ghosts or spirits) are Strepsirrhini, wet-nosed primates of the Superfamily (biology), superfamily Lemuroidea (), divided into 8 Family (biology), families and consisting of 15 genera and around 100 exist ...
famous for its bizarre appearance".
Business model
Mongabay.com is independent and unaffiliated with any organization. The site has been used as an information source by
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
,
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
, the
Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Channe ...
,
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
,
UPI
United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th c ...
,
Yahoo!
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...
, and other such outlets.
Revenue
All of Mongabay's content is free to access on its site, thanks to the volumes of visitors per month - as of January 2008, 2.5 million. In 2008, Butler said that the traffic brought the site $15,000 to $18,000 a month from
AdSense
Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advert ...
, but the decline in advertising revenue across the environmental media sector after
the financial crisis, sharply reduced the site's income. In 2012, Butler launched mongabay.org, a
501(c)(3)
A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of 50 ...
organization, to support Mongabay's education program and non-English reporting initiatives as well as expand its environmental reporting initiatives, including grants for journalists. Mongabay phased out advertising on its news content in 2017.
Publications
Academic journals
Mongabay.com formerly published ''Tropical Conservation Science'', a
peer-review
Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...
ed,
open-access
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
academic journal
An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and d ...
on the
conservation
Conservation is the preservation or efficient use of resources, or the conservation of various quantities under physical laws.
Conservation may also refer to:
Environment and natural resources
* Nature conservation, the protection and managem ...
of
tropical forest
Tropical forests (a.k.a. jungle) are forested landscapes in tropical regions: ''i.e.'' land areas approximately bounded by the tropic of Cancer and Capricorn, but possibly affected by other factors such as prevailing winds.
Some tropical fores ...
s and of other tropical
ecosystem
An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syste ...
s. Since its inception in 2008, it has four issues a year, in March, June, September, and December. It used to provide opportunities for scientists in developing countries to
publish their research in their native languages, but as of September 2012, ''Tropical Conservation Science'' publishes papers only in
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
. It has been published by
SAGE Publications
SAGE Publishing, formerly SAGE Publications, is an American independent publishing company founded in 1965 in New York by Sara Miller McCune and now based in Newbury Park, California.
It publishes more than 1,000 journals, more than 800 books ...
since August 2016 and Mongabay no longer has any affiliation.
Other websites
On May 19, 2012, Mongabay.com launched an
Indonesian language
Indonesian ( ) is the official language, official and national language of Indonesia. It is a standard language, standardized variety (linguistics), variety of Malay language, Malay, an Austronesian languages, Austronesian language that has be ...
affiliate.
[Mongabay.co.id]
"Situs Berita dan Informasi Lingkungan"
"Mongabay-Indonesia'', 11 November 2015. Retrieved on 11 November 2015. In June 2016, Mongabay launched a Spanish-language news service in Latin America. And in January 2018, an Indian website was launched. In 2019, Mongabay established Mongabay-Brasil, a Portuguese-language bureau staffed by Brazilians. Those were followed by Hindi and French sites.
Non-profit
![StlODw06](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/StlODw06.jpg)
The Mongabayorg Corporation is a
nonprofit
A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
501(c)(3)
A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of 50 ...
charitable organization headquartered in
Menlo Park, California
Menlo Park is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County within the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south ...
that raises awareness about social and environmental issues relating to
forests
A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...
and other ecosystems. Mongabay.org was established in 2012 as the non-profit arm of
Mongabay.com
Mongabay (mongabay.com) is a conservation news web portal that reports on environmental science, energy, and green design, and features extensive information on tropical rainforests, including pictures and deforestation statistics for countries ...
, an
environmental science
Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physics, biology, and geography (including ecology, chemistry, plant science, zoology, mineralogy, oceanography, limnology, soil science, geology and physical geograp ...
and
conservation
Conservation is the preservation or efficient use of resources, or the conservation of various quantities under physical laws.
Conservation may also refer to:
Environment and natural resources
* Nature conservation, the protection and managem ...
news web site launched in 1999.
[Guynn, Jessica]
"A site of inspiration"
''San Francisco Chronicle
The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...
'', 5 July 2006. Retrieved on 17 November 2015. In 2014, Mongabay.com's news production was shifted under Mongabay.org.
[Butler, Rhett]
"Shifting to a non-profit model for environmental news reporting"
''Mongabay.com
Mongabay (mongabay.com) is a conservation news web portal that reports on environmental science, energy, and green design, and features extensive information on tropical rainforests, including pictures and deforestation statistics for countries ...
'', 29 October 2013. Retrieved on 11 November 2015.
By November 2022, Mongabay.org had three main program areas: environmental news production in
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
,
Indonesian
Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to:
* Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia
** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago
** Indonesian ...
,
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
,
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
,
Hindi
Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...
, and
French; capacity-building programs for journalists including paid fellowships, and
K-8 education. The Bay Area Tropical Forest Network, a social network in the
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...
, was an additional project under Mongabay.org that ran from 2009 until 2019, hosting over 100 in-person events at dozens of venues.
Mongabay.org is a member of the
Global Investigative Journalism Network
The Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) is "an international association of nonprofit organizations that support, promote and produce investigative journalism." The association is headquartered in the United States, and its membership i ...
.
History
Mongabay.org was founded in 2012 by conservation journalist Rhett Ayers Butler. Butler established the non-profit due to his desire to expand the scope of Mongabay's environmental science and conservation news service.
By mid-2020, Mongabay was receiving 7 million unique visitors a month on its Mongabay.com and Mongabay.co.id web sites.
The first project under Mongabay.org was Mongabay-Indonesia,
[ an Indonesian-language environmental news service run by a team of journalists in Indonesia. Within a year of launch, Mongabay-Indonesia was the most widely read Indonesian-language environmental news service. By 2015, the site was drawing more than 500,000 unique visitors per month and had correspondents in more than 30 cities and towns across the archipelago.
Butler applied the Mongabay-Indonesia model to Mongabay's global operation in 2014, launching a network-based approach to covering environmental stories in English. The pilot project focused on using data from ]Global Forest Watch
Global Forest Watch (GFW) is an open-source web application to monitor global forests in near real-time. GFW is an initiative of the World Resources Institute (WRI), with partners including Google, USAID, the University of Maryland (UMD), Esri, V ...
to develop stories about what was happening on the ground the world's forests, including deforestation
Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. The most concentrated d ...
, conversion to plantations, and conservation. After the nine-month pilot produced over 180 stories in more than 40 countries, including articles that generated significant interest in policy circles, the project was expanded to a range of other topics. The network of paid English-language correspondents reached 50 by mid-2015.
Mongabay.org also provides small grants to journalists to help with travel and reporting costs for stories published in high-profile third party media.
Acknowledgements and awards
In 2008, Mongabay was named by ''Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine as one of the best "green websites". In 2014, the founder Rhett Ayers Butler became the first journalist to win the Field Museum's Parker-Gentry Award for contributions "in the field of conservation biology whose efforts have had a significant impact on preserving the world's natural heritage and whose actions and approach can serve as a model to others". The website was also the winner of a Science Seeker award in the environment category. Mongabay founder Rhett Butler was selected as a winner of the 2020 SEAL Environmental Journalism Awar
In September 2022, Mongabay founder Rhett Butler was selected as a winner of the 27th Heinz Awards, Heinz Award for advancing environmental journalism worldwide.
Finances
Mongabay.org relies primary on grants and donations to fund its activities.[Mongabay.org]
"Mongabay.org Annual Report 2013"
''Mongabay.org
Mongabay (mongabay.com) is a conservation news web portal that reports on environmental science, energy, and green design, and features extensive information on tropical rainforests, including pictures and deforestation statistics for countries ...
'', 2014. Retrieved on 11 November 2015. Most grants come from philanthropic organizations
Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private good, focusing on material ...
like the Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...
and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Less than one percent of the organization's revenue came from advertising in 2014.[Mongabay.org]
"Mongabay.org Annual Report 2014"
''Mongabay.org
Mongabay (mongabay.com) is a conservation news web portal that reports on environmental science, energy, and green design, and features extensive information on tropical rainforests, including pictures and deforestation statistics for countries ...
'', 2015. Retrieved on 11 November 2015.
Mongabay.org's network-based approach allows it to run with a small staff relative to its volume of content production.
In 2013, Mongabay.org reported total revenue of $528,128, a five-fold increase from its 2012 revenue of $92,319. Overhead costs amounted to 2.9 percent in 2013, while fundraising
Fundraising or fund-raising is the process of seeking and gathering voluntary financial contributions by engaging individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gathe ...
costs came in at 2.2 percent. Revenue in 2014 reached $910,569, while in 2015, it hit $1.3 million. In 2017, total revenue eclipsed $2 million.
Programs
As of May 5, 2021, Mongabay had several program areas under the non-profit, including: Global English News; Mongabay-India (environmental news on India in English and Hindi
Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...
); Mongabay-Latam (Spanish-language environmental news in Latin America), Mongabay-Brasil (Portuguese-language environmental news on Brazil); Mongabay-Indonesia (environmental news on Indonesia in Bahasa Indonesia); Mongabay Education (environmental education content for pre-K through high school); and internships and fellowships.
Efficiency and accountability
As of April 29, 2021, Mongabay.org had a 100/100 score on Charity Navigator's Encompass Rating System, which evaluates a nonprofit organization’s financial health including measures of stability, efficiency and sustainability as well as its accountability and transparency policies. Mongabay.org had a Guidestar Platinum Transparency rating, which according to the Guidestar " emonstratesits commitment to transparency.
Leadership
Mongabay.org is governed by its board of directors, which consists of several members. The founder is a member of the board. Operationally, Butler, serves as CEO and executive director.[Meehan, Emily]
"Not Letting Success Get to Your Head"
''The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'', 8 September 2006. Retrieved on 17 November 2015.
Mongabay.org also has a non-governing advisory board, which includes biologist
A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...
Peter H. Raven, primatologist Jane Goodall
Dame Jane Morris Goodall (; born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall on 3 April 1934), formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English primatologist and anthropologist. Seen as the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best kn ...
, and William F. Laurance.
References
External links
Mongabay
Mongabay.org
Mongabay-Indonesia
Tropical Conservation Science
Bay Area Tropical Forest Network
American environmental websites
Internet properties established in 1999
Nature conservation in Indonesia
Environmental organizations based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Charities based in California
1999 establishments in California